My custom markup ignored : Using Custom Markup with the wpp_get_mostpopular();

I am trying to create custom markup with the plug in WordPress Popular Posts. If I do this through the admin panel it works fine!

However, I am trying to do it directly in my custom theme template file with the function wpp_get_mostpopular(); in order to add classes etc.

<?php wpp_get_most_popular($popular_posts_args);?>

<?php $popular_posts_args = array (

'header_start' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'header' => 'Popular Episodes',
'header_end' => '</h2>',
'limit' => 5,
'range' => 'all',
'title_length' => 25,
'title_by_words ' => true,
'post_type' => 'post',
'cat' => '4',
'excerpt_length' => 20,
'thumbnail_width' => 100,
'thumbnail_height' => 80,
'wpp-start' => '<ol class="wpp-list">',
'wpp-end' => '</ol>',
'post_html' => '
		<li class="clearfix">
		<div class="wpp-content">
		<div class="wpp-img">{thumb}</div>
		<div class="wpp-text">{title}
		<p class="wpp-stats">{stats}</p>
		</div>
		</div>
		'
);
 ?>

This yields no changes to the default HTML markup that is generated by the function, but does create the widget and returns results.

I went through the documentation and the plugin, and found a field called ‘custom__html’. I added it to the list of args and set it to true, no changes. Default HTML is generated.

Spent a little more time looking through some more variables in the plugin file, found a couple more, so my $args variable became;

<?php
  $popular_posts_args = array (
	'header_start' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
	'header' => 'Popular Episodes',
	'header_end' => '</h2>',
	'limit' => 5,
	'range' => 'all',
	'title_length' => 25,
	'title_by_words ' => true,
	'post_type' => 'post',
	'cat' => '4',
	'excerpt_length' => 20,
	'thumbnail_width' => 100,
	'thumbnail_height' => 80,
	'custom_html' => true,
	'markup' => array(
		'wpp-start' => '<ol class="wpp-list">',
		'wpp-end' => '</ol>',
		'title-start' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
		'title-end' => '</h2>') ,
		'post_html' => '
			<li class="clearfix">
			<div class="wpp-content">
			<div class="wpp-img">{thumb}</div>
			<div class="wpp-text">{title}
			<p class="wpp-stats">{stats}</p>
			</div>
			</div>
			'
		);
	wpp_get_mostpopular($popular_posts_args);
?>

And still no joy???

My custom HTML parameters are ignored.

Am i doing something wrong? Perhaps i am calling the wrong fields in order to create custom HTML?

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/